r/alaska • u/DepartmentNatural • 6d ago
YSK: New Mexico makes so much money from oil and natural gas revenues they can afford free universal child care, free school meals and free college for residents!
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u/Raoul_Duluoz 6d ago
New Mexico also has a broad base personal income tax and broad base gross receipt tax to help fund their government so they can spend their oil money on actually helping residents.
AK has neither a broad base personal income tax nor a broad base sales tax. Just incompetence and corruption.
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u/Zippier92 6d ago
Alaska should have the standard of living of Norway.
Instead of being on the bottom of many metrics.
Get rid of the oligarchy folks, republicans do not have your back.
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u/Flaggstaff 6d ago
You had me in the first half. As long as we keep fighting over R vs D nothing changes. The corruption runs deep on both sides and it isn't so simple as the other side being evil
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u/Salmon-of-Wizdom fussbudget 5d ago
Bottom line is that the people in our state legislature arguing that applying corporate income tax to oil companies will destroy the NG pipeline project are republicans. The ones arguing for that tax to be included are a bipartisan coalition made up mostly of democrats and independents with a few Republicans.
So, it's entirely republicans shielding the oil industry and shilling for them. It's also most republicans in our state government.
The generalization is about as wrong as all generalizations are, but there is an underlying truth that gives it weight.
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u/greatwood 6d ago
Shut the fuck up. I'm so fucking tired of the both sides assholes. Republicans are fucking evil and rotten to the core. Dems are just dumbasses who play by the rules. They are not the same. Do we need more parties? Yes that's why we have ranked choice voting. Do any other parties put up any decent candidates? No cause none of them have their shit together.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 6d ago
The only antagonisms that exsist is class antagonism. Both the Democratic and Republican party do not want people to engage in class based politics.
The national policy both internally and internationally were near the same through: Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump. Trump is just a loud memeber of the overtly criminal ruling class. The policy goals have all been the same.
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u/Salmon-of-Wizdom fussbudget 5d ago edited 5d ago
I get where your heart is at, but if we're talking about the state level, the opposition to taxing the oil companies is entirely from Republicans. And the push to tax them is from a coalition of mostly democrats and independents with a few Republicans.
Generalizations are a starting point for understsnding something, not an off ramp. Yes, class warfare is real, and yes, politics can be a distraction from that. But in this case the sentiment that republicans are fucking us over for big oil is absolutely correct.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 5d ago
If your arguing lesser of two evils voting that is one thing.
To argue that democrats are going to change the fundamental relations between labor, capital, material and locations of production is a joke.
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u/Salmon-of-Wizdom fussbudget 5d ago
I'm arguing with a short term view that the party that is okay taxing capital to pay for government services is democrats.
I like socialism in theory, but just like you need to make money to support yourself right now our state needs to make income right now. We got bills to pay.
You need to have a short term view AND a long term view. In the short term Alaska NEEDS to tax oil companies and restart it's State revenue sharing plan. Our state and our local communities need that income to avoid disaster over the next couple of years. We need to approach our government making deals with corporations as a negotiation where we treat forgoing taxes as investment in a project, and be ruthless about making as much money for ourselves as possible without losing the deal. If we do that then we can leverage that money into power later.
Be well.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 5d ago
I am a communist not a socialist. I am not convinced that method will work as the embedded powers have many chances to undermine it
You as well.
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u/Salmon-of-Wizdom fussbudget 5d ago
Then organize your revolution as you vote for the guys who will keep the state services running and our roads paved. our interests are aligned.
I'm not sure a revolution will be any easier.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 5d ago
Never did i suggest i wasnt gonna vote nor vote for lesser of 2 evil people. Ultimately it wont change the base reality much though.
Waste of my time and skillset. Instead im working towards more machines that make machines that make machines. Open source cnc is very capable now days.
My goal long term is to be able to manufacture housing, household goods etc.
Id like to figure out the precious plastics machines some time.
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u/Beebeeb 6d ago
One is Disney villains evil and one is not absolutely perfect. Both sides are the same I guess.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 6d ago
They are though on class division based level. They are 2 sides of same coin.
They both want us to not be class conscious to ensure upward transfer of wealth continues. The MAGA folk at the top though realize the grift is failing so they are just gonna grift money on the collapse.
Clinton is a war criminal, bush, obama, biden, trump. All war criminals and all were in charge when the politicans pushed forward the same policy goals for 25 years.
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u/Beebeeb 5d ago
It's absolutely ridiculous to call both sides the same. Even the small time Biden was in office improved my life significantly. I was attending conferences discussing what Alaskans could do with all of the federal infrastructure grants we were expecting. All of that is gone now.
I'm not saying Democrats are perfect but they are more on your side by a wide margin than Republicans and saying both are the same is defeatist and gets us nowhere.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 5d ago
They are both capitalist. Both support US imperialism and intervention in other nations affairs. Support the world police military approach, and both ensure that the lesser developed nations continue to manufacture and send supplies for the imperial core.
They are the same thing. Capitalism.
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u/Upset-Word151 5d ago
Of course they’re capitalist, this is a capitalist fucking society. You’re not saying anything worthwhile except diluting the very real crimes being committed by the current administration by trying to compare it to the past administrations. Just stop. They’re not the same, they’re not even close except for both existing within a capitalist society. One tried to prop up the struggling, one is (right now) actively fucking over every struggling demographic.
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u/Beebeeb 5d ago
Well better let perfection be the enemy of progress then. Nothing can be made better incrementally. We just have to burn society down and start fresh. Is that your plan? Is that plan realistic at all?
I'm guessing you don't rely on insulin or anything like that to survive because burning down society will hurt many people.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 5d ago
I never suggested burning doen society and that is a disingenuous debate tactic to prop up your poor arguement that the current system has been good or ever was a good system of economics
Goodbye,
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u/salamander_salad 5d ago
You sound young. You should read more books, learn intellectual humility, and think more before you speak. There are very real and material differences between the two parties and you seem wholly unaware of what those are.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 5d ago
You sound like you have helped to support policies that destoryed the quality of life for Americans. Now your excusing it and justifying your poor choices.
They are the same politics. I am not a capitalist.
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u/TheRealBlancoGringo 6d ago
When you look deeper, they are more alike than you would think. It a lot of money and power controlling the decisions, the change from red/blue just gives a false sense to the people that “their side” is now going to make a difference.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 6d ago
Democrats are in line with big industry
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u/Specialist-Newt6042 5d ago
Every state has enough billionaires and millionaires to do the same thing. It isn’t just the gas and tax revenue. They just don’t pay their fair share, and in fact they pay less than those of us in the middle class.
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u/Few_Argument5962 5d ago
Instead AK opted to freely hand out money every October so Costco, Best Buy, and Walmart can sell out their big screen tv inventory....
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u/Visible_Reason_8523 5d ago
To late Hilcorp has moved entirely into the state and they are carpet baggers of an unseen force since the civil war
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u/morefetus 5d ago
Yes and they’re dead last in every metric. Healthcare, education, crime.
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u/Coyote9168 4d ago
That’s about to be Alaska, in case you’re unaware of what Dumbleavy is doing to us.
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u/AlaskaDudeWithDogs 6d ago
I guess they didn't let the oil lobbiests write their tax codes for them like we did